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One van - packed until it was ready to pop;
One car - full to the roof;
One boot load of stuff - coming up with a friend next weekend;
Half a boot load of stuff in our friend’s shed;
A plant and a vacuum cleaner waiting collection in our old garage;
And that is that.
Llanelli is 298.46 miles behind us - the future is unwritten.
We’ve not got a house, we’re camping out in the in(out)laws’ spare room.
It’s kind of exciting to wonder where we will be at Christmas time, kind of stressful too.
Today we looked at a house, it needs a lot of work doing, and a lot of money to buy it - well a lot of money to us anyhow - I wonder if that’s where we’ll end up… Or maybe its somewhere we havent seen yet. Yikes!
Thanks so much everyone who helped us, I wish I had taken photos of the crew, truth was I was too busy worrying about what would happen when the van got full! Anyway, Paul’s shoulders would have filled the whole picture, and Michael and his immaculate ‘tash hopped it too early.
So there we are, thanks everyone! See you in September!
Up to my eyes in boxes at the moment, boxes of books mainly - which says something I suppose. We are due to leave here next weekend (16th), and as yet we dont have a house to go to, so the fall back plan is to move in with the in-laws (out-laws) while we concentrate on finding a new place. I say we… Kelly will be in North Africa for a good part of September, and then after she gets back, she’ll be preparing for a trip to India not long after, somewhere in between those two, I’m supposed to be going to a conference in Portugal.
Yikes…
One of the finds, as I packed boxes this evening, was my old contacts book. When I was working the hard news beat, my contacts book was my constant companion, and it contains addresses and mobile phone numbers of high profile authors, actors, musicians, celebs, business people, policemen, lawyers, even a spy! I’m sure most of them are out of date now, but it was a real blast from the past to flick through it - what a totally different world I lived in then!
When we move most of our stuff will have to go into storage as we search for another house, until very recently I was convinved we would have to rent somewhere, but then I realised that rents are as high if not higher in some cases, than paying a mortgage, so I thought, well, perhaps we should buy somewhere then… singularly failing to take into account the fact that our ridiculous income would mean we couldnt get a mortgage, and would struggle to convince a landlord to rent to us!!
However, change seems to be afoot, more news on that before long I hope. Among other things, I am inspired by the availability of shared ownership schemes that are knocking around. I think they would require a higher income than we have at present, but I’m working on that one, and there may be light at the end of that particlar tunnel.
So we may yet become home owners, which will conflict somewhat with my ‘property as theft’ mentality - but then so does the notion of owning my own underpants, so there you go.
We’ve had a few wobbles about moving this month, it felt a bit too uncertain, and we almost called it off, but the boxes are filling up, the van is booked, and in a fortnights time, we’ll be gone. Yikes again!
I’m going to run the Llanelli 10K on Sunday 22nd of June, well, I say run…
I’m going to try and run the Llanelli 10K, and if you want to encourage me to do so, please would you consider sponsoring me?
The funds will all go towards the Organic cotton project I have been working on in Cambodia. There is still a long way to go with this project, and a lot of funds needed, so any contributions will be welcome!
Anyway, to be honest, I reckon you’ve got a fair chance of keeping your money 
Please email me if you want to sponsor me, much obliged!
Today was an important day for us, we officially told the community here that in August, our family will be leaving South Wales, and heading back up the road to Humberside, from whence we arrived some four years ago.
Part of our trip away over Easter was spent talking to folk in Grimsby about our thoughts and plans for this time, and as we had already talked it over with our leaders, and family members etc, today was the last part of the journey in terms of telling people our plan.
In fact when we originally planned to come down here, our plan was that we would remain for about two or three years. The death of our son this time last year meant that any thoughts of moving on at that time were shelved, and I’m glad. This last year in Llanelli has been very special.
What will this mean for our work? My work will carry on much as it does now, although obviously I’ll be less involved in the day to day life of the community here. The plan is that I will return to Llanelli once a month for meetings, and from time to time the whole family will come down together.
Why go back to Grimsby? The reasons are many and varied. But most importantly we just feel it is the right thing for us to do. Unfortunately it does mean leaving this lovely part of the world, and our happy home for something quite uncertain. We dont know where we’ll live, how we’ll afford to pay a normal rent, or how we’ll cope so far from the Welsh beaches we love so much! But with uncertainty comes excitement, excitement at what God has got for us over the next years, and the thrill of moving into destiny.
Its no secret that Horizons is something of a monastic community in its own way, and I think that is something we’ll be looking to grow around us in Grimsby too. Kelly has a strong vision for enabling local church to move outwards from within… in other words not being totally reliant on ‘mission agencies’ for the initiatives in terms of overseas trips, but being able to call on resources that will allow them to go themselves.
Thanks to a cheap rent, we live on very meagre income at the moment, unless we can find similarly cheap accomodation (unlikely 
) we’ll have to find ways of earning more money. Possibly I’ll take more writing on again, or maybe there’s another way. We’d love to open a coffee shop, but so far that hasnt worked out in planning yet.
I will of course continue my work with organic cotton, which continues at its usual snail’s pace! And lots of other interesting opportunities are floating around too - so we’ll just have to see what happens.
In our meeting this morning Gareth spoke about the question of ‘why are you here?’ referring to here in Llanelli - not on the earth :) His answer was ’so that God can change you.’ I can testify to that, we’ve been changed a lot over the last four years, and I’m thankful for it.
Lets just see what the next few years have in store…
Gareth Jones is the leader of World Horizons UK - his two week old daughter, Macy Lou is critically ill.
After catching a virus, she grew very ill. She has now been diagnosed as having blood poisoning, and her internal organs have begun to stop working.
She is being flown tonight to Great Ormond Street hospital in London, where there is a unique machine which can properly oxygenate her blood.
It has been a major battle to get her to this point - she has until late this afternoon been too poorly to move. She is currently reliant on heart and lung bypass machines.
Please will you join us in praying for her? She needs the touch of God to heal her body, and her parents Gareth and Helen need all the support we can give.
Macy means ‘weapon’ and Louise means ‘renowned fighter’. These names are significant – Macy is in a fight for her life, our adversary would love to steal her away, and even more he would love to divert our attention from the truth of who our king is.
Our heart’s cry, our desire, our desperate plea is that God would show his great power and heal our little sister.
Please pray for her.
all details here, if you can go, then I reccomend it!
dont forget the celebration!!
It starts this weekend - and they tell me it wont be raining! For those interested in names, I can tell you that Godfrey Birtill will be there on Sunday night, but I can also tell you that whatever day you go - it will be a riot.
I have a meeting in Ammanford this afternoon, its a small town not far from Llanelli, where I live.
The interesting thing (to me) about Ammanford is that it has an unusual amount of green companies and people doing business there, for instance:
Okay, so it isnt Machynlleth, which is a remarkable little place, full of all kinds of eco enterprises, but that is (in my opinion) down to the amount of hippies who went there and settled down, starting green businesses. Ammanford doesnt have hippies wandering the streets, its just an ordinary Welsh town, but with some wonderful and extraordinary people.
For the eco tourist by the way - Wales is the place to come. In fact, its pretty nice if you’re eco inclined or not.
its monday - I’ve been back at work today!
and to round the day off, a cftn meeting which tonight was in a nice old church - funny there’s loads of cool old churches round here, but I’ve hardly been inside any of them.
anyhow, I found this evening’s meeting encouraging.
a lot of people talk about revival, and in general I tend to be a little shy of joining in, cos I find that often there is a measure of self indulgence in it all. Tonight though I was reminded of how the Welsh revival brought great good to many nations around the world, bringing peace, and justice to hundreds of thousands of people.
then war broke out, in Europe we all started killing each other, and many of the young men saved in the 1904 revival never returned from the trenches.
in Korea, where revival had hit in 1907, the Japanese invasion had more new believers killing each other.
this celebration comes from a pure desire to see God remove the blockages which saw the dying off of the movement of his spirit 100 years ago.
I’m pleased to be part of it, as I believe the intent to be pure, and the plan to be simple.
so if you want to sing to God, and to join with others from all around the world doing so in Llanelli’s wonderful surroundings, then check out the site.
there was a good video shown tonight which explains the vision very clearly, I’ll see if we can youtube it, and then you can see it too!
On a musical note… hahaha, its only a matter of weeks now until celebration for the nations, which I have blogged about here before.
So far there are guest musicians and bands coming from countries including Korea, India, various parts of Europe, and the Americas. Also various visitors from around the globe coming to South Wales, to be part of a week of sung worship.
Should be quite a sight, afraid I wont be there to see it, but I can reccomend Llanelli as a good place to visit this July…
I’ll update with more info as things progress.
I like to walk by the sea, and there’s plenty of sea around here.
along one stretch there is a lot of rough grassland very close to the shore, and you get a great variety of bird song.
I often wear headphones when out walking, but down there… nah.
So I wrote this ode:
“I dont need my mp3
when I walk down by the sea
because the birds are set on shuffle
and they sound just great to me.”
Not one of my prize winning efforts.
wretched mud.
first the Scarlets scoring yet another try on Friday night, as previously blogged here.
Ho hum.
And the view of Llanelli beach from the beach front cafe…
as well as the view of the Gower peninsula from the same place.
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